COVID-19 was identified as a global pandemic by the World Health
Organization on March 11, 2020. The uncontrolled transmission of COVID-19
(Coronavirus Disease-2019) in almost 215 countries has posed a serious health issue
among the world population. Cases of COVID-19 have emerged from the Huanan
seafood market in Wuhan, South China, in December 2019 and have been rapidly
spreading throughout the world since then. In this chapter, we have tried to extract data
from various research reports, WHO guidelines, and other published articles to
summarize the prevention strategies for COVID-19. This disease causes varying
degrees of illness in patients like fever, cough, sore throat, breathlessness, fatigue, and
other related symptoms. There are no drugs or other therapeutics presently approved by
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prevent or treat COVID-19. Current
clinical management includes infection prevention, control measures, and supportive
care through anti-viral, anti-microbial as well as immuno-modulating drugs as first-line
treatment, followed by symptomatic treatment and oxygen therapy. Besides drugs,
plasma convalescent therapy is being utilized in serious patients, but most of the
vaccine candidates developed against SARS-CoV-2 are in the clinical trial stages. It is
necessary to identify the potential cases as early as possible and isolate the vulnerable
population from the confirmed cases of COVID-19, to prevent the potential
transmission of infection to healthy people, other patients, and health care staff. Early
protection, early identification, early diagnosis, and early isolation are crucial to
combat the COVID-19 outbreak. Improved personal protection and hygiene
management at community levels should be officially endorsed to protect the
population from infections. Proper arrangement of medical resources (i.e., oxygen
supply, ventilators, PPE kits, gloves, sanitizer) can prevent the crucial damage caused
by the disease. Another pressing need of the hour is to promptly discriminate patients
with COVID-19 from other febrile diseases. Thus, the need of the hour is to develop
rapid and accurate diagnostic technologies that can help the world to win the war
against such viral pandemics.
Keywords: Breathlessness, COVID-19, Oxygen supply, Preventive strategies,
SARS-CoV-2, Ventilators.
